Ask anyone shopping in Santa Rita Ranch what sealed the decision, and the answer often circles back to what's coming. A Walmart. A Target. A retail strip along Highway 29 with names like Longhorn Steakhouse and Olive Garden attached to it. The story gets told as though it's basically finished, just a matter of weeks. It isn't. Three separate projects are moving on three separate schedules, built by three separate companies with three separate sets of incentives, and treating them as one timeline costs a buyer real information about what the next year actually looks like.
What's Actually Finished
Start with the one piece of this story that's already true. Costco opened at the intersection of US-183 and State Highway 29 in March 2026. It has a warehouse, a gas station, and the rotisserie chicken. If a buyer walks a home in Santa Rita Ranch today and a listing agent mentions Costco as a selling point, that claim can be verified this weekend. It's the only major retail anchor near the community that's operating right now, not projected, not under construction, not pending a permit.
Everything else being sold as "nearby shopping" is somewhere earlier in the pipeline, and the gap between those stages is bigger than most marketing copy lets on.
The Gap Between "This Summer" and the Actual Date
Santa Rita Ranch's own community site described the incoming Target as slated to open "near Costco this summer," language that was still live on the developer's page in April 2026. Estimates like that are common while a store is under construction. Target has since confirmed a firm grand opening date of October 11, 2026, announced directly by the retailer, and that date lands well past the "this summer" framing the community's own marketing had set months earlier.
That gap matters less as a gotcha and more as a pattern. A national retailer controls its own construction schedule, staffing plan, and inventory logistics, so any community's published timeline for a store rests on decisions made elsewhere, and dates can move. A buyer reading the April wording as a firm date would be waiting past the summer for a store that has not yet opened. As of this writing, the store is still closed. The date is real and close, just a couple of weeks out, but it isn't today.
What Santa Rita Ranch Center Is, and Isn't, Yet
The bigger project is Santa Rita Ranch Center, a 400,000 square foot retail development at the northwest corner of Ronald Reagan Boulevard and Highway 29, anchored by a Walmart Supercenter and built by Provident, a developer known for master-planned community and build-for-rent projects. The numbers attached to it are real: a $100 million build-out, a roughly 176,000 square foot Walmart, and about 400 jobs once it's staffed. Developer Ed Horne described the project as a deliberate move to keep pace with the community's growth.
The construction calendar tells a different story than the press release does. As of a report published in September 2026, construction on the Walmart building itself wasn't set to begin until late October 2026, with an opening projected for mid-November 2027. That's a project that, as of this fall, hadn't broken ground on its anchor store. The restaurant and retail names attached to the surrounding parcels, Longhorn Steakhouse, Olive Garden, Ross, and PetSmart, come from leasing marketing materials rather than signed, publicly confirmed tenants, according to reporting from Community Impact in May 2026. They may well land there. They aren't committed yet in the way a signed lease or a building permit would be.
Three Tiers, Not One Timeline
| Project | Location | Status | Expected Timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Costco | US-183 & Hwy 29 | Open and operating | March 2026 (delivered) |
| Target | US-183 & Hwy 29 | Built, not yet open | Confirmed for October 11, 2026 |
| Walmart / Santa Rita Ranch Center | Ronald Reagan Blvd & Hwy 29 | Construction not yet started as of Sept 2026 | Opening projected mid-November 2027 |
| Longhorn Steakhouse, Olive Garden, Ross, PetSmart | Santa Rita Ranch Center outparcels | Named in leasing materials, not confirmed tenants | Undetermined |
Reading that table against a listing sheet is a useful habit for anyone comparing Santa Rita Ranch to other Liberty Hill communities right now. "Near new retail" can mean three genuinely different things, and only one of them is something a buyer can drive to today.
What This Does to a Home's Asking Price
Local resale data over the trailing twelve months puts the median sale price for homes in Santa Rita Ranch in the neighborhood of $591,000, up about 10 percent year over year. That's a meaningful jump for a single community, and some of it reflects the ordinary appreciation you'd expect in a fast-growing corridor. Some of it also reflects a story that's easy to overweight: the assumption that a Walmart-anchored retail center is basically a done deal, when the construction timeline says otherwise.
Prices quoted across different portals for homes in the community vary more than usual, which tracks with a community that, as of a May 2026 report, was still under 50 percent built out. Newer sections carry different finishes, different lot sizes, and different builder pricing than homes sold in the community's earlier phases, so a wide range isn't a red flag. It's a reason to ask which phase a specific listing sits in before comparing it to a headline median.
The Part of the Community That's Actually on Schedule
It's worth separating the retail timeline from the community's own internal build-out, because the two run at very different speeds. Santa Rita Ranch's developer controls its own amenity and neighborhood construction directly. A new amenity complex opened in the Saddleback section in May 2026, adding two pools, four pickleball courts, and a clubhouse to a community that already had one of the larger amenity packages in the region. Eldorado Village opened as an exclusive Perry Homes offering with prices starting in the $550,000s, built on some of the highest lots in the development with Hill Country views.
Community-built amenities and third-party retail run on different clocks. The first depends on the developer's own construction schedule. The second depends on national retailers and a separate retail developer, which is why the April wording for Target and the confirmed October date do not match.
How to Read the Next Listing That Mentions Nearby Shopping
A simple question separates fact from projection. Is the retailer open for business today, does it have a permitted building and a publicly confirmed completion date, or is its name only appearing in leasing marketing? Costco clears the first bar right now. Target sits in the second category, a finished building with a firm date on the calendar, just not open yet. The Walmart-anchored center and its named restaurant tenants sit further back still, with construction not yet underway and no signed tenants confirmed, and treating any of these three as equivalent to Costco is the kind of assumption that's easy to make and easy to check, once you know where to look.
FAQ
Is the Target in Liberty Hill open yet? Not yet, but the date is firm. Target has confirmed October 11, 2026 as its grand opening, well after earlier community marketing had described the store as arriving "this summer."
Is the Walmart at Santa Rita Ranch Center open? No. As of September 2026, construction on the Walmart building had not yet begun, with an opening projected for mid-November 2027.
Are Longhorn Steakhouse, Olive Garden, Ross, and PetSmart confirmed for the retail center? Those names come from leasing marketing materials associated with the project. As of reporting in May 2026, they had not been publicly confirmed as signed tenants.
If you're weighing Santa Rita Ranch against another Liberty Hill or Georgetown community and want a straight read on which amenities are real today versus which ones are still on a construction calendar, that's exactly the kind of homework Jorgenson Real Estate does before a client ever writes an offer.
